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I got this timely image from wikipedia, although I was tempted to steal one from Flickr for my commercial gain.

I have a question for you businesspeople out there: do you ever salute a fellow businessperson in the hallway going to or from a meeting? I do. In fact, I counted myself doing it over 5 times today, and I received 3 salutes this morning. Where did this come from? I’ve noticed it in small business as well as in massive corporations. While I’ve noticed that mostly men salute each other, I have been saluted by women as well (although I don’t recall ever saluting a woman…must be some repressed misogyny in there somewhere).

While admittedly strange, I think this behavior has a rational explanation to it. Let’s begin with the hallway, the most likely place one would receive or give a salute. A hallway is never a destination unto itself. A hallway is, by its very nature, a pathway to somewhere else. Therefore those in a hallway are transient and unable to engage one another in a meaningful (time consuming) way, because the very purpose of being in the hallway is to go to someplace else.

Naturally, exceptions abound, especially if the water cooler, photocopier, microwave, or vending machine happens to be in the hallway. But I digress.

So my theory: eventually, saying “What’s up?”, “Hey, how’s it going?” and the like become somewhat meaningless, because, being en route, you don’t really have the time to listen to the answers to those questions. Or worse, someone might ask you to do something for them, or tell you about their bad day. In the hallway of all places!

This leaves you with only a few options. First, you can briskly walk by the other person and look down at the floor, your papers, or your watch, basically demonstrating non-verbally that you have more important things to do than to engage another human being gliding down the hallway. Or, you can wait until the last possible moment to make your move, connecting with a brief smile, a head nod (up, or down? which is better?), and a barely audible “Hi”.

OR, you can salute! This gesture, borrowed from our military, simultaneously acknowledges someone’s presence and gives them a certain measure of respect. It says, “Hello there, fellow hallway dweller, I see you there and recognize your duties within this hallway are the same as mine, to move on. And while I’m happy to see you, we both agree with this gesture that we have other things to do. I’m being short, but man, I’m being friendly.”

Now that I’ve done a little comm theory dissection on the salute, I will probably feel too self conscious to use it again for awhile. In the mean time, I’m going to start leaving for meetings a few minutes early, and spend some quality time in the hall.